Hovering Around the Edge
by Fireworkss
Summary: When given the chance to go away, Neo decides to return to the Archangel instead. A friendly conversation helps him understand why.


He had forgotten how much he loved it—the flurry of activity after a battle was over. It meant work, and mechanics, and getting grease in his hands. It meant rush, decisions, letting go of any other worry except getting his machine fit. It meant comradeship. And today, he needed that.

Neo tossed his helmet back on his seat in the Grasper and turned to the man behind him, resolute.

"So, Chief. Could you use an extra pair of hands?"

Murdoch smiled, and handed him a wrench. "Let's start with your flyer, shall we?"

In a minute, they had circled the machine twice, Murdoch writing away on a clipboard and, the more he wrote, the more Neo felt his forehead wrinkle. Finally, they took a look at the engine.

"Well…" Murdoch said. "It isn't so bad, don't you think?"

"No, not at all, considering that you've used up more than six pages writing your damage report."

"Ah, but I have a large scrawl. See?" Murdoch said, holding up the clipboard. Neo looked back, serious.

"It isn't funny."

Murdoch glanced at his notes, apologetic, scratched his head, and smiled. "Well… we have to be able to smile at life a little."

Neo gave him a grin, though it was strained, at best. _Yeah… try to smile when she sees this mess…_ He was about to jump back on to sit at the board, but stopped when he felt Murdoch's eyes on him.

"What?"

"You seemed so natural just now, like you'd done this before many times."

"Ace though I am," Neo began, which brought another smile to Murdoch, "I have been shot down before, as you so well know. My being on this ship in the first place is proof of that."

The Chief regarded him for a while before saying, "Help me with the engine first. After that, I'll let you climb up back to your seat when we're ready to tweak her."

"Yes, sir."

They set to work at once, and soon it was apparent that the damage he'd caused would not be as easy to fix as he had thought. Neo knew what it was like to be a Captain and receive this kind of reports, to try to explain the expenses and squeeze them in on a budget, and it had never even occurred to him to wonder who was paying for this ship to be flying out there. Where would they replenish supplies after today's battle? What would happen when they ran out of fuel for the Grasper, out of oil and parts… would they just park the thing to gather dust?

He frowned.

"She'll fly again, won't she?"

"You were rough on her, but no so much as that. Don't worry, she'll fly."

"I was rough only because I knew she could do it," Neo said, giving the engine a fond pat that made it spit some more smoke. "She's tough. She's gotten me through a lot."

He had not realized what he'd said until he heard the silence surround them. Murdoch had stopped fiddling with the screws and was staring at him.

"That battle… It wasn't easy. The Minerva… you know."

"Yeah, I know."

The Chief didn't sound convinced, but Neo didn't feel like explaining himself further, so he let it go. Chief Murdoch, on the other hand, wasn't ready to let go so easily, though he was more subtle than Neo would have given him credit for.

"She'll have to review our report," he said, as nonchalant as he could manage. "Hopefully she won't be too mad. You came back just in the nick of time, after all."

Neo knew not how to reply, so he said nothing. This was just why he'd much rather not talk to anyone here. The Captain seemed to be their only subject of conversation.

"And you flew her like a true pilot. You're quite good, and fearless."

"It comes with the trade."

"The man who flew the Grasper last… he was quite good at it, too."

"I reckon he was."

"He wrecked her too, more than once, but she was always so happy he'd come back that she wouldn't mind how many repairs we'd have to do to it, which is why I think she won't be mad now that—"

"Chief," Neo said, and suddenly his voice sounded too stern in the enclosed space. "She cannot possibly be mad at this, since she was willing to let go of the Grasper completely when she gave it to me, in the first place. If anything, she should be relieved it's back." He injected all the finality he could into his tone but, to his dismay, his intention was lost on Murdoch.

"And I wondered why she'd let you have it. It meant you would go away."

"It did."

"But you're back."

"I am."

"Why?"

_Why?_ He'd asked himself that thousands of times on the way back, and thousands of times since he'd landed, and he asked himself once again. Was there even a simple answer? And, how could he tell it to Murdoch?

"Listen," he said. "Maybe she just wanted me away and out of here. Maybe I am back to grate on her nerves. Who knows? Maybe I've turned into a spy and have come to spill out all of your secrets to the Alliance."

Murdoch set the screwdriver down and leveled him with such a stare that Neo had to fight hard to hold it.

"You wouldn't do that," Murdoch said, at last.

"How would you know?"

"I see in your eyes that you are not as bad as you think you are, as you want to make us think you are. There's something rather innocent about you, for all the bad-guy attitude."

Neo grunted. "I stopped being innocent a long time ago."

"Really? Then why were you frightened when I first mentioned the Captain? Why were you wistful when you talked about the Skygrasper? Why were you offended when I talked about going away? Why were you nervous when I asked you why you'd come back? Why were you relieved when I said you seemed innocent to me?"

"I didn't know you were a psychologist, too."

"I only talk about what I see, and though my head is always on the machines, my ears are full of people. I am not dumb. Nor blind."

"All I can tell you is," Neo began, proudly, but soon hung his head in defeat, "that I don't know what to tell you. I had been yearning to get out of here so badly, but once I was up there, all I could think of was coming back."

He was expecting a knowing nod, a smile, even a pat on the shoulders, from Murdoch, but all he got was a sidelong glance as the Chief took up the screwdriver again and resumed his work.

"Why do you think that was?" Murdoch asked.

"I don't know… it felt wrong and unfair."

"Unfair?"

"I know. It sounds so ridiculous after I was shot down and taken prisoner by you people."

"You know why Kira did it, though, don't you?"

A minute nod. "But he was wrong. I'm almost sorry to disappoint everybody, but you are all crazy."

"Are we really? Tell me, then, just exactly, why did you come back?"

Neo had to close his eyes. He could see her clearly, leaving him behind at the landing platform as the wind made her tears trail back to his skin. He hated to see her cry—hated it with a passion, hated it as much as he hated snakes or traitors who abandoned their comrades, hated it with every fiber of his being. He knew that it was his fault, and though only days before that would have brought him a grim sense of satisfaction, today he could only be angered at it. At first he had thought that a woman like her should not let herself be humbled by any man, but at this point in the day he knew that he was ashamed he'd done it. He could clearly remember every hurtful word, every angry look he'd given her, and each thought felt like another stabbing at a wound he didn't even know he had.

"As I was flying away, I thought of something," he said, and saw Murdoch's ears stand up. Yeah, he'd thought of something, all right, but he was not about to tell him what it was.

He'd seen her as she was before—because he knew it had to have been at a time earlier than the now he knew—and he was still shaken because he could not tell where the image had come from. It wasn't hard to imagine her in an Earth Alliance uniform—he'd actually thought about that many times—but he knew that seeing her in such a specific situation as he had, looking so commanding and vulnerable at once as she gave the order to let—yes, himself—land on Archangel… Neo knew he had an over-active imagination, but that little snippet of a thought was just too much. Was he seeing La Fllaga's memories now? If Neo's memories could have been i implanted /i in him, just as the Archangel's crew seemed to be implying, they could have easily implanted La Fllaga's memories as well, couldn't they? His fist thumped at the engine and it spluttered smoke again.

"You saw it, didn't you?" Murdoch said, amid coughs. "Your memory of this place."

"I didn't see a memory. What I saw… I don't know where it came from, but it wasn't mine."

"What I don't understand about you right now," Murdoch continued, back to staring at his work, "is how, if you are so willing to take risks on the air, you are so unwilling to take risks on land."

"What do you mean?"

"You do all this crazy stuff when you're flying, and it all works, but when it comes to here, to people, you're scared to even take a first step."

"What do you mean?"

"Do you know how to ask another question? Geez," Murdoch said, but Neo could tell he was smiling. "What I mean is why do you so adamantly refuse to even consider the possibility that you could be him?"

"Because I'm not! I'm not!" At least, he was able to stop his hand before it hit the engine again. "Can't you see how this tears apart everything I know, how it destroys the very essence of my being?"

"But what if you are not who you think you are? Doesn't that destroy the essence of your being, or whatever, too?"

"It's not the same."

"Just because you're comfortable with who you are right now doesn't make it true. It's all about risks, like I was telling you."

"What makes you think you know so much about this?"

Murdoch smiled again, that self-satisfying, complacent smile. "Because I care about you. And I care about her too. And because you were different when you looked at me after you landed today; you were like the man I remembered."

Neo thought of that for a moment, willing to disregard the open allusion to his alleged identity in an attempt to glimpse at the core of Murdoch's argument, though he was not prepared for Murdoch to see this as an opening.

"Well… truth is that I cannot tell you who you are or what you want, because you will know all that better than I ever could. I can try to be a friend, and remind you that a little risk is not so bad, every once in a while, but I have a feeling that you know that well, too. Who I think you are, or who you think you are, is really not the issue here. The fact is that you came back; you came back when you didn't have to, and that is a very important thing for you to ponder about and, of course, you are the only one who can answer that question. See?" he said, flashing some teeth, "There are things nobody can take away from you."

Their eyes met for a split second before Neo turned his face away, but it was enough for him to feel something he never remembered feeling, and it surprised him because of the familiarity that enveloped him.

Why had he come back? As he thought about it, it wasn't really hard to realize that he had an answer.

After standing on the landing platform long enough to watch Archangel disappear into the horizon, he had jumped into the Grasper and had sat, staring at the control board for a long time.

Now that it came to it, it wasn't easy to think about leaving. After his last _encounter_ with the Captain, the possibility of a removal from the ship had seemed almost certain, and yet he had begun to recognize within him a wish to stay close. He wanted to see her, to look at her until his eyes got tired and he found out why he knew she smelled of gardenias, why he felt so warm when she was close, why looking at her reminded him of the caresses he felt in his dreams, why she stared so longingly at him when she thought he wasn't looking, why he wanted to feel like he belonged with them when they were his enemies, why she had let him go... He knew it was a childish wish, and most likely product of a sudden chemical imbalance, or a cowardly nature that he hadn't discovered yet, or maybe bereavement and guilt. Whatever it was, the desire was too strong to be denied and, because of that, he had to get far from them. He couldn't be unfair to them again—unfair to her—coming back because of his selfish need, and so he sped away as fast as he could in the opposite direction, until the Minerva showed up and he felt a panic seize him.

He _knew_ he'd been with the military since he was a boy, but he could not remember ever feeling fear like he felt when he thought of the Archangel in danger, not even for his own life. When he thought that she could be hurt, or taken, or killed, he understood there was no way he would fly away without a fight; they'd have to shoot him down to make him go away, and he'd make it hard for them to do it.

Thinking about it now, the raw quality of the impulse astonished him. He could almost _remember_ a time when he was emotional and rash and impulsive like he'd been today, letting his feelings rule him rather than his brain. Had it been that long ago?

Thinking about it now, the finality of what he almost did frightened him. That he came so close to walking away from her forever, now that he had begun to… no… yes… it had to have been a memory, what else could it have been? He couldn't go away now, not when he had a chance to find out.

He felt a hand pat his shoulder and squeeze tight.

"You remember, don't you? A time when you took risks on land too?"

He gave Murdoch a half-smile. Hadn't he just put up a huge solo fight against a Mobile Suit and come out only with a _scratch_ ? Yes. He knew he could do this. He knew he would die if he didn't.

Looking at Murdoch, he felt that strange but familiar feeling again. Comradeship. Somehow he knew that, long ago, he'd felt it before.

Comradeship. It felt like being lost, and suddenly finding a way back home.


End file.
